


Chapter 37

by seriesofvignettes



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Book 7: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Gen, Pre-Epilogue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-25
Updated: 2016-09-25
Packaged: 2018-08-17 07:58:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8136337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seriesofvignettes/pseuds/seriesofvignettes
Summary: The first day or so of Harry's life after he defeated Voldemort.





	

**Author's Note:**

> wow ok this is the first thing i've ever posted on ao3. idk, i just wanna try it out. i wrote this for a class (lol) which is why its not very long. its basically just me wanting Harry to marinate in sadness for a little while. i guess this is kind of what i imagine Harry's day would be after everything is over. 
> 
> just wanted to mention that here im envisioning Harry's scar to be more like lightning that covers a lot of his forehead, not like one jagged line.

Harry, Ron, and Hermione slowly descended the spiral stairs, lost collectively in their individual thoughts. At the bottom, Hermione squatted down to the mangled gargoyle no longer guarding the entrance and offered to help fix it. It grumbled in annoyance and declined. Ron shrugged at her startled look and quickly clambered over it. Harry and Hermione followed, though she continued to look back at the gargoyle until the three of them turned a corner to another corridor. As they made their way through the halls of Hogwarts, cautiously stepping over debris and pools of blood, Harry had the creeping suspicion that Ron and Hermione were avoiding something. He glanced warily between the two of them, before stopping completely in the middle of the corridor that lead to the Great Hall. He shot them pointed looks, until Hermione let out a soft sigh and placed her right hand on his shoulder.

“Harry, maybe you should look in a mirror.” Her weak smile failed to look as reassuring as she hoped. Ron nodded in agreement. Harry spun on his heels and marched his way into the nearest bathroom. He could tell they were following him, their feet shuffling uncomfortably along the dusty floor.

Ron stifled a laugh as he remembered the first time the three of them walked into a girls’ bathroom. Harry turned to face Ron and offer him a knowing smile, but his eye caught his own reflection in one of the mirrors lining the sinks and he stopped mid-twist.

Harry squinted at his own bright green eyes, watched as he brought a hand up to push at his overgrown messy hair and moved it back from his face. His scar, the terribly large facial disfigurement that had defined so much of his life, was gone. Harry’s fingers trembled as he slid them along his forehead, no longer catching on the various ridges and bumps of his now vanished scar.  

“It’s been gone since Voldemort - we just didn’t know how to tell you Harry, I mean, you didn’t even realize,” Ron’s words cut off as he glanced over to Hermione who again reached her hand out to Harry.

“I thought for sure Dumbledore was going to say something to you about it.” Harry stared unfocused at her as she talked, his mind reeling back the spools of time to when they were both eleven. He remembered being overwhelmed by how fast Hermione talked and that she had known so much about him based on the the sheer number of textbooks she read over the summer. Harry was forced to think back on how her eyes traced the branches of his scar as it curled from the top of his forehead to the beginnings of his eyes. Hermione had not once looked at him in that way or allowed her curiosity to take precedence over their friendship since.

Emotion crashed over Harry in an unsolicited wave; love for his two best friends washed away the confusion and the paralyzing reality of his newly smooth forehead. He stumbled forward, towards them, pulling them in and holding them close to his fragile and shaky body. For a second, they were one unit, each clumsily ending where the others began, a tangible warm actuality to Harry, when so much else was foggy and distant. The moment passed however, when someone accidentally stepped on Ron’s foot, Hermione’s hair was pulled in an awkward direction, and Harry had to step back in order to cough, the emotion weighing heavily on his throat. 

“Thanks,” He muttered, not looking at either of them. 

“‘Course,” Ron mumbled back, with eyes looking fixedly at the floor and the tips of his ears burning red. Hermione smiled a watery smile at the two of them and softly pet at Harry’s back.  

* * *

Harry spent most of the day Voldemort was defeated in a Ministry office. While Hogwarts was teeming with working humans and magical creatures alike, clearing rubble and gore from its war-torn floors, Harry pored over documents regarding his godson. In the end, Edward Remus Lupin would live with his grandmother, who opened her broken heart and home to her orphaned grandson. Upon his return to the castle, Harry was ushered to the refurbished Hospital Wing for Madam Pomfrey to fret over. She mended his physical wounds and questioned him thoroughly on his well-being. When she asked him how his scarless forehead felt, he told her he felt nothing.

Determined to remain useful, Harry joined the efforts of cleaning up the castle for a few mind-melting hours of labor. His focus was scattered as he worked, much like the debris he was assigned to clear, until the linear progression of fatigue caught up to him. Harry looked back over the corridor, catalogued the few odds and ends he had not managed to organize, and went to find McGonagall. He could feel his hands trembling as he walked and a mild headache throbbed into existence as he neared the Great Hall.

The dead bodies had been removed and most everything looked like it had all those hours ago, before the final battle had begun. Harry stared at the spot where Tom Riddle’s body had lain, splayed out and white, once Harry had caught the Elder wand. His own wand sat heavy in his pocket, reminding him of the short minutes he took to walk across the castle grounds to Dumbledore’s grave. Replacing the Elder wand in the stone casket had been a strange ordeal. When Harry looked onto the dead face of his former headmaster, his non-existent scar seemed to ache at the memories that accompanied it for all of the six years Harry had known him. Harry’s hand involuntarily moved to his forehead, trying to hold onto something that was no longer there. His walk back to the castle was a whirlwind of sorrow and reluctant acceptance. 

Locating Professor McGonagall proved an easy task. She stood tall and proud in the center of the Hall, sending instructions to those who continued to work. Harry slowly made his way towards her, taking the time to observe the people who sat at tables, chatting or crying quietly in small groups. Ron happened to be sitting at the Ravenclaw table with Luna, their heads close together. When Ron spotted Harry, he waved him over but Harry shook his head and quickened his pace to reach his professor.

“Professor, the corridor I was working on is almost finished, just a few things that still have to be dealt with,” Harry informed her, then listed what was left to do. “What I wanted to ask though is, is Gryffindor Tower is still alright? I’ve been wanting to see it.”

She lifted an eyebrow at him, “The Tower was not disturbed during the battle. You can go up there if you want, Potter, you do not need my permission to take a break. If anyone deserves one, it would be you.” She gave him a small, concerned smile. “There are plenty of couches and beds in your dorms for you to take advantage of. No one would think to stop you. I will make sure someone completes the task you started. Now, off with you,” and with that, McGonagall swept away from him. Harry sighed quietly to himself and began his slow but thankfully uninterrupted journey to Gryffindor Tower. 

* * *

The sun that rose so proudly and victoriously was reluctantly slipping from the sky, casting spidery rays of light which accompanied Harry on his trek upward. The Fat Lady was no longer in her portrait, but it swung out of the wall as he approached it. The room looked exactly the way it always had and Harry grimaced to himself for expecting it to be different. He bypassed the common area in favor of finding his old dorm. In doing so, he was pleased to see that though only two boys had returned for seventh year, there remained five beds. The four poster bed felt like home to Harry as he stretched out on top of it. He worried for a second about dirtying the bed with the clothes he hadn’t changed in days and shoes that had walked through everything from the muddy Forbidden Forest floor to blood that had dried by now. Instead of letting himself be bothered, Harry closed his eyes and let himself sink into the sheets, drifting in and out of consciousness. 

Sometime later, when Harry still had not succumbed fully to the exhaustion that tugged at his eyelids, he took his wand out of his pocket and began twirling it in his fingers. His mind played images for him as he stared at the ceiling.

_Sometimes the older members of the Order looked at Harry funny. He knew it was his scar and resentment and anger raged through his veins more often than not. Remus and Sirius sat down with him one day before fifth year began to talk to him about it. Remus did most of the talking; Sirius did most of the reassuring._

_“I get it Harry; they look at me strangely too. I mean, you can see the scars on my face, everyone can. They’re the main reason it’s so hard for me to get a job. People know I’m a werewolf just from looking at me and they don’t give me a chance, either.” Remus fondly reached over to pat Harry’s knee, “One day, they’ll realize they don’t have to look at your scar to know who you truly are. Scars mean a lot of things Harry. But you need to work on making it mean something to you other than what people project onto it. To me, your scar means that you survived Voldemort and that you continue to do so. But it’s not up to me to tell you how to feel about it, in the end it all depends on you. It’s important that you don’t forget that. You are a strong person, and hopefully you will allow the scar to be a reflection of that.”_

The light Harry’s wand was emitting flashed bright in front of his eyes, jolting him from his memory of the two Marauders to another, less clear one. 

_“It’s an Invisibility Cloak,” said Ron, “I’d give anything for one of these. Anything. What’s the matter?” He asked, looking from the Cloak to Harry’s face._

_“Nothing,” Harry said. He felt very strange. Along with wondering who had sent the Cloak and about his father, Harry thought back to all the times he had wished with all his might that he could turn invisible. He thought back to lying in bed in his cupboard under the stairs, in the middle of the night, whispering to the spiders, dreaming out loud of living without a scar marring his face. His arachnid friends never had condolences for him, but the loneliness that seeped into his bones always faded away with these unacknowledged confessions. Before Harry could say anything else, the dormitory door was flung open and Fred and George Weasley bounded in._

Over the next few hours, as the sky outside lightened with the oncoming day, more memories piled up behind Harry’s eyes. He thought back to conversations in Grimmauld Place with his friends after he hid from them and how Ginny reprimanded him for forgetting about her experience with possession. Draco Malfoy’s pointy face and accompanying sneer floated around, his taunts echoing in Harry’s head and reminding him of his recent encounter with Draco’s mother, Narcissa.

Harry continued to absently play with his wand, still surprised that he had been able to fix it. As his mind cleared, he began to examine the magic it was casting, bright beams flashing in the pale light of the imminent morning. Unbeknownst to him until that very moment, Harry’s wand was not just spewing out inconsistent rays of magic; there was a pattern. The light emanating from his wand, as he spun it through his fingers, took on the form of the scar that no longer adorned his face. Its shape appeared and reappeared over and over in different directions guided by the wand. He dropped his wand onto his stomach, heart thudding in his chest at the sudden realization. It was not the first time his wand had done something without his explicit prompting, but this time it felt immensely personal. Harry gingerly picked up the wand, placed it on the empty bedside table, and deposited his glasses there as well. He was too tired to think anymore. Harry turned into his pillow, and shut his eyes.

* * *

It was dark when Harry managed to blink the sleep away from his eyes. At first, he thought he had not slept at all, but the heaviness of his body told him otherwise. Harry looked down along the lines of his limbs and groaned softly to the silent room. Dirt and dried blood covered almost every inch of the clothes that he had worn way past any acceptable amount of time. Harry pulled them off and rummaged through Seamus and Neville’s discarded robes to find something presentable. After showering and donning his borrowed garments, Harry reached to pick up his wand and suddenly words that Ollivander had spoken to him over the years resounded in his mind. _“Curious indeed how these things happen. The wand chooses the wizard remember… I think we must expect great things from you, Mr. Potter… After all, He-Who-Must-Be-Named did great things - terrible, yes, but great.”_ Ollivander’s ominous words trailed off and gave way to more desperate ones, begging for Harry’s forgiveness, _“he tortured me, you must understand that! The Cruciatus Curse, I - I had no choice but to tell him what I knew, what I guessed -”_

Harry shook his head to clear the thoughts away and stared at the wand held loosely in his palm. Hagrid had gone with him to get that wand. Hagrid, who never made Harry feel awkward about his lack of knowledge of the wizarding world. Hagrid, who told Harry he was famous and that everyone knew who he was. Hagrid, who told Harry that they knew about the bolt of lightning which had taken refuge on his forehead; Harry had wondered how many of them knew he was a freak. Hagrid, who had been his first real friend. On his way down from Gryffindor Tower to find sustenance and company, Harry wondered if he should visit his half-giant friend.  His thoughts were disrupted as he descended the stairs to the lobby outside the Great Hall.

“Harry, ‘bout time you showed up. Hermione and I were going to go eat dinner outside by the lake to get away for a bit. Wanna come?” Ron called up to him, his voice carrying and turning a few heads. Harry tugged his hair down in embarrassment, trying to hide the scar that was no longer there, and nodded. A few minutes later, Hermione joined them, a small picnic basket dangling from her right hand, and the trio made their way out of the castle through the double doors.

“So, did you have a good rest?” Hermione asked.

“Yeah, I guess. Our beds were still there.” Harry replied and then quietly told the two of them about the memories that had saturated his mind. “It’s strange though, because Remus told me to find a way to make my scar mean something to me, but now it’s gone and he’s gone and I can’t stop thinking about it… I guess I’m just not really sure if I’m okay with it or not.”

When Harry, Ron, and Hermione reach the edges of the Lake, they sprawled out on the cool grass. Hermione said, “Maybe it’s okay though. Your scar was important to everyone when Voldemort was alive. Maybe it’s good that it’s gone because it shows that he’s finally defeated and the war is over. I’m not saying that you have to be okay with it right now, but that’s something at least.”

“People are still going to stare at me all the time, though, aren’t they?” Harry groaned and let his body fall back onto the ground, blinking up at the emerging stars. Ron started unpacking the provisions Hermione had prepared as she transfigured a few of the napkins into plates and utensils. Harry tried to find Sirius’ star in the sky as his two friends prepared small sandwiches. He was not successful, and let the heavy feeling of loss climb up his bones. “I’m going to miss him, Remus, Fred, everyone.”

“Yeah, me too.” Ron agreed, and shivered as Harry’s sadness curled through the air and washed over them all. “Mum’s been in a right state. She’s been crying. Dad’s not much better.”

After a few beats, Harry righted himself and somberly accepted the sandwich Hermione passed him. She had unshed tears glimmering in her eyes. Ron leaned into her side seeking comfort and the three of them pretended to be hungry for the food they began to eat.


End file.
